NutritionData: Looks Like a Common-Sense Food Information Resource

NutritionData
"know what you eat"

"Since its launch in 2003, Nutrition Data has grown into one of the most authoritative and useful sources of nutritional analysis on the Web. In July 2006, Nutrition Data was acquired by CondéNet, a digital publisher under the Condé Nast Publications umbrella dedicated to editorial excellence. Nutrition Data's continuing goal is to provide the most accurate and comprehensive nutrition analysis available, and to make it accessible and understandable to all...."
(About NutritionData.com)

Someone showed me this website this morning, and so far I'm rather impressed. It's an online information resource, with a glossary of common nutrition terms, what they say is "sensible diet advice" (they're probably right), and - astonishingly - advice on how to gain weight in a healthy way. And yes, a person can be too thin.

So far, this website seems to be a far cry from the 'meat-is-poison' and freak diet fads: you know, low-carb diets where you're told that an orange and an chocolate eclair are equivalent, nutritionally? Or those ads, back when cholesterol was the big bad bogeyman, touting things like Twinkies as having "zero cholesterol?" The ads were probably accurate, by the way: quite a few junk foods have no cholesterol. That doesn't make them particularly good for you, though.

Back to NutritionData - this seems to be a pretty good online resource for people who want to know more about what they eat. There's a registration process that gives you access to more information, including the option to

• "Log and analyze your foods and recipes in My ND
• "Store your ideal daily nutrient values to track against your actual consumption
• "Customize our nutrient search to your personal preferences"

They'll want to know an email address, and what state or province you live in, as well as a bit more fairly non-critical information: looks like a reasonable idea, although I'm not sure I'll register myself.